This article reports research on concept mapping as an aid to the revision of technical text. The authors draw on Carroll's work in text processing and other work in concept mapping and formative evaluation of instructional materials.

Learning from text involves the integration of new knowledge into existing memory. This takes place in two phases:

1. the reader makes sense of the text by constructing a text base - a meaningful, hierarchical arrangement of propositions;

2. the reader retrieves information from long-term memory, relates each piece of new information to a prior piece, then either adds the new information to memory or rejects it.

There are three learning principles involved:

1. learners try to link new information to what they already know;
2. knowledge is stored in networked clusters and organized into schemata (isolated pieces of information are not recognized as meaningful and are soon forgotten);
3. learners actively construct meaning by trying to find regularity and order in what they see, read, or hear.

Concept mapping is a learning aid based on these principles. A concept map is a picture of the ideas or topics in the text and the ways these ideas or topics are related to each other. Graphically, ideas and topics are enclosed in boxes. Lines connecting the boxes are labeled, and show the relationships that link the ideas.

The authors describe an experiment in which technical writers at IBM revised a chapter from a computer manual. The experimental group used concept mapping; the control group used conventional revision techniques (primarily outlines). Neither revision time nor ratings of quality by an experienced technical editor were significantly different between the groups. However, when undergraduate computer science students read the revised texts and were later tested for recall and comprehension, their comprehension was significantly higher with the concept-mapped versions.

The results suggest that concept mapping is a useful revision tool for writers; it could also aid in the initial composition phase. Moreover, documentation is rapidly going online, and electronic text tends to be nonlinear. Concept mapping may be a valuable tool for linking ideas rationally and for designing coherent structures into hypertext documents.